Author Spotlight

David Thomson

Born and raised in London, David Thomson is the author of A Biographical Dictionary of Film and, most recently, Sleeping With Strangers: How the Movies Shaped Desire, among many other books.

7 Results
The Chameleonic Charms of Sir Alec

Alec Guinness carved out a place among the greatest of British actors by mixing his demure persona with dry wit and a taste for the absurd.

By David Thomson

Features— Jun 7, 2019
Rebecca: Welcome to the Haunted House

Alfred Hitchcock achieved Oscar-winning success with this psychological thriller, a tumultuous collaboration with producer David O. Selznick.

By David Thomson

Essays— Sep 5, 2017
The Fugitive Kind: When Sidney Went to Tennessee
The Fugitive Kind is not talked about too much today, but it was a big production for its time. To start with, Brando had won a contract of one million dollars to do the picture. Next, the teaming with Magnani was hailed as a bold chemical exp…

By David Thomson

Essays— Apr 26, 2010
BLAST FROM THE PAST: DILLINGER IS DEAD

If Dillinger is dead, who will take revenge? There were movies once that began, “Custer is dead,” in which you could reckon that a lot of Indians were going to pay the price. This bizarre film by Marco Ferreri (only just released in the United St

…

By David Thomson

Mar 3, 2009
The Last Emperor, or The Manchurian Candidate
In the first few moments of Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor, we get extreme versions of China, done in the film’s rigorous yet electrifying color scheme. We open in the drabbest years of Mao, with an innately gray column of political priso…

By David Thomson

Essays— Jan 7, 2009
Le Samouraï: Death in White Gloves
Tone and style are everything with Le samouraï. Poised on the brink of absurdity, or a kind of attitudinizing male arrogance, Jean-Pierre Melville’s great film flirts with that macho extremism and slips over into dream and poetry just as we grow m…

By David Thomson

Essays— Oct 25, 2005
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne:The Earrings of Robert Bresson

Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne is fixed in history as not just the second feature film by Robert Bresson, but as one of those movies that heralded an austere, modernistic way of seeing and feeling. But not even Bresson, in 1944, knew that he was bound

…

By David Thomson

Essays— Feb 15, 2002